Michael Ledeen: His Fascination with Italian Fascism

On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative
clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism,
Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was proud to have been a member
of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon
movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelmanthe
latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that
Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used his influence to obtain for him. But
there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey
began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous
political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism.
I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli,
holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist
for National Review and the principal cheerleader today for an extension
of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran.

Ledeen has gained notoriety in recent months for the following paragraph in
his latest book, The War Against the Terror Masters. In what reads like a prophetic
approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad.
We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature,
art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always
hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions
(whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing
America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be
undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existenceour
existence, not our politicsthreatens their legitimacy. They must attack
us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic
mission.

This is not the first time Ledeen has written eloquently on his love for the
democratic revolution and creative destruction. In 1996, he
gave an extended account of his theory of revolution in his book, Freedom Betrayed
 the title, one assumes, is a deliberate reference to Trotskys Revolution
Betrayed. Ledeen explains that America is a revolutionary force
because the American Revolution is the only revolution in history that has succeeded,
the French and Russian revolutions having quickly collapsed into terror. Consequently,
[O]ur revolutionary values are part of our genetic make-up. We
drive the revolution because of what we represent: the most successful experiment
in human freedom. We are an ideological nation, and our most successful
leaders are ideologues. Denouncing Bill Clinton as a counter-revolutionary
(!), Ledeen is especially eager to make one point: Of all the myths that
cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most
pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary
tradition.

Ledeens conviction that the Right is as revolutionary as the Left derives
from his youthful interest in Italian fascism. In 1975, Ledeen published an
interview, in book form, with the Italian historian Renzo de Felice, a man he
greatly admires. It caused a great controversy in Italy. Ledeen later made clear
that he relished the ire of the left-wing establishment precisely because De
Felice was challenging the conventional wisdom of Italian Marxist historiography,
which had always insisted that fascism was a reactionary movement. What
de Felice showed, by contrast, was that Italian fascism was both right-wing
and revolutionary. Ledeen had himself argued this very point in his book, Universal
Fascism, published in 1972. That work starts with the assertion that it is a
mistake to explain the support of fascism by millions of Europeans solely
because they had been hypnotized by the rhetoric of gifted orators and manipulated
by skilful propagandists. It seems more plausible,  Ledeen
argued, to attempt to explain their enthusiasm by treating them as believers
in the rightness of the fascist cause, which had a coherent ideological appeal
to a great many people. For Ledeen, as for the lifelong fascist theoretician
and practitioner, Giuseppe Bottai, that appeal lay in the fact that fascism
was the Revolution of the 20th century....